2004-02-19 - 8:37 a.m.

5 Gallons of Paint

Who would have thought that a 5 gallon bucket of house paint would weigh so much! But you can thankfully burn through it quickly.

I spent Sunday and Monday painting the inside of my kid brother's new home. He isn't moved in yet, but has two weeks to finish the house before the rent on his apartment runs out.

Though I only painted the walls in his hallway and primed one wall in his den / study, I managed to wear myself more than I thought. So much so that last night I popped in the Babylon 5 DVD and just sat and watched.

Normally I don't like TV. There is nothing wrong with it, but it is too passive a form of entertainment for me. I just don't idle well.

B5, on the other hand, is the exception that proves the rule. OK, so I also watch new Star Trek: Enterprise episodes and a movie now and then, but when it comes time to rest and pull away from a computer, I'd rather read.

Lately I've been spending my time reading the Dune prequels, comics, or screwing around on the nationstates site. NationStates is kinda a text based roleplaying game. Perhaps a better description would be that NationStates is three games in one. At its lowest level you make daily decisions on issues and simply watch your nation grow. At a middle level of involvement your nation can join a United Nations (which is nothing like the real UN) and your nation will move to a more centrist international point of view. At the third level, which is the real time suck, you negotiate with other nations.

It goes without say that a number of the younger players have no idea what to think of me. I talk about how my nation has a Super Soldier Program lead by a researcher named Dr. Bruce Banner, and that it has a Psi Corps lead by a telepath named Alfred Bester. My country harvests the mysterious Spice Melange to which it is physically addicted, and spends most of its international resources arguing in favor of human rights.

The point of all this is, that between working on my brother's new home and then trying to negotiate treaties to prevent genocide (in the game), my time has been pretty tight! I'll just have to limit how much time I spend at the computer and start jogging again.

n.p. the church :: gold afternoon fix

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